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The 1875 St. Mary’s
Disaster

The St. John’s Public Ledger of March 4 1875 carried the following report from Salmonier, St. Mary’s Bay:

Names of the men lost at St.
Mary’s

…”Nearly all the men of St.
Mary’s left the shore on Tuesday morning to board an abandoned vessel jammed in
the ice about two miles west of Cape English; the ice slacked off in the
evening and she was driven out to sea with the wind east-north-east, frozen in
a large sheet. All succeeded in getting on shore with the exception of 42 men,
a certainty 20 of them drowned and died on the ice in the storm; hope of the
other 22 being on the vessel; nothing wrong with the hull or material but no
compass and little provisions. She is a French vessel named La Violette;
Girardville Master, from France bound to St. Pierre; cargo rum, salt, sugar and
coffee. All her crew safe at Holyrood (St. Vincent’s). Captain dangerously
ill.

The following men are known to be lost: John Power, James
Peddle, Pat Tobin, Thomas Bowen and son, James Barry, John Barry, Thomas Barry,
William Reuben, John Fewer, George Rousell and son, Mike Vail and son, Peter
Grace, Joseph Grace, Richard Critch, Pat Dobbin.

The following day March 5th 1875 a further telegram from
Salmonier to Hon. Ambrose Shea gave a list of the missing men as follows:

These reports were the first
indication to the world of an ongoing tragedy for the St. Mary’s, St. Vincent’s
and area population. The chain of events leading to this disaster had started
with a report to the magistrate of St. Mary’s on March 1st 1875
that a ship was stuck in the ice about two miles off Cape English and was being
abandoned by her crew. The magistrate proceeded to St. Vincent’s (which was
then known as Holyrood) to investigate the report and found that a large number
of local residents were already gathered on the beach with the intention of
boarding the vessel to secure her cargo. The mate and crew of the vessel which
they identified as The Violette had managed with some difficulty to cross the
ice and make it to land. The mate informed the magistrate and the local residents
that the Captain of the ship was too ill to even attempt the journey over the
ice. Several men from St. Vincent’s on hearing this volunteered to go aboard
the ship and bring the captain to safety. The men gathered on the beach would
wait for the captain to be brought ashore before boarding the abandoned vessel.

James Burke the local constable residing in St. Mary’s was
summoned to St. Vincent’s by the magistrate who was concerned that there might
be trouble. Burke arrived just after noon as the men were bringing the Captain
ashore. Michael MacCarty in his story of this event stated that “he was so
weak and ill the men had to take turns carrying him on their backs, but they
managed to get him ashore. Patrick Stamp, a resident Vincent’s took the
captain to his house and gave him every care and attention. The Captain was so
weak he couldn’t even sit up but had to be carried to Stamp’s house on a
slide.”

It was mid afternoon by the time
the captain had been brought safely ashore and the weather conditions were
giving indications of a storm brewing. The men on the beach, in spite of this,
decided to carry out their plans to board the vessel. At the subsequent
hearing into the disaster, one of the participants Michael Hines testified that
the men did not go as a large single group but in parties of two or three men.
It was rough going over the ice but Hines’ testimony was that they all
succeeded in getting aboard the Viollette. They were successful in off loading
most of the cargo of salt, sugar, coffee and rum. When they decided to head
back to shore, they discovered that the wind had now swung around to the east-north-east
and the ice had now moved off shore and there was a large patch of open water
between them and the shore. It was now getting late in the afternoon and the
threatened storm broke in full fury. There was no option left to the group
but to try to get back to the Violette. It was quickly obvious that this would
not be as simple as it was when they originally boarded the vessel. The wind
had begun driving the ice-pan and the vessel out to sea.

As the men tried to gather
together in larger groups, some of them fell into the icy waters and were
drowned as they attempted to jump from the smaller to the larger ice pans. Eventually
they managed to gather into two parties on separate pans of ice. They were now
desperate to save themselves from the breaking ice pans and the fierce storm. They
spent a cold and hungry night on the ice trying to shelter themselves behind a
large ice bolder. The next day seventeen of the men in one party managed to
get back on board the Violette. The remaining ten men in the other party
continued to drift away on their ice pan. Some of these men had fallen into the
ocean while attempting to get from the smaller ice pan to the larger one and
were in a desperate condition dressed in wet frozen clothes and with continuing
high winds, drifting snow and temperatures dipping well below the freezing
point. One of the survivors Jimmy (James) Barry related to my father in later
years that John Power my father’s grandfather who was then sixty years of age
had fallen into the water and had died the first night. Just before dawn
Michael Vail and James Whelan died from the cold and exhaustion. Later in the
day Thomas Boland died. The survivors huddled together waiting for rescue.
After another day their conditions worsened and George Rousell and his son died
as did Mike Vail’s son. The weather finally cleared so that they could see Cape
Pine in the distance. This buoyed their spirits and gave them renewed
strength and energy to walk the fifteen or so miles and somehow they managed to
maneuver over the rough ice and landed at Cape Pine. The men who had made it
to the Violette had been carried out to sea for about a hundred miles with the
ship still frozen into the ice pan. The wind then changed back towards land
and they drifted back to within about forty miles of the land. The hull of the
Violette was sound as were he sails and rigging. She was however almost empty
of provisions except for some rum and flour. At first the rum was a welcome
sight but some of the wiser men in the party noticed that an attitude amongst
some of the party to drown their sorrows, quietly allowed the rum to run
overboard.

The predicament of the stranded
men had been reported and made headlines in the local St. John’s newspapers.
The reports were based on conflicting data and consequently the first reports
were not accurate. They first reported that forty two men were trapped on the
ice and twenty of them were dead. Later a revised number was given that
included the men that had made it to the Violette. It now listed thirty four
men. On March 5th a telegram to Sir Ambrose Shea from Salmonier
St. Mary’s Bay was published in the St. John’s Public Ledger. It listed
nineteen men as missing on board the Violette.

The government dispatched the
H.M.S. Tiger to search for survivors. It also promised to provide assistance
for the families of the men lost in the disaster. Rumors abounded and on
March 9th one false rumor circulated that the Violette had been
sighted and boarded. On March 16th the Public Ledger reported that
there was still no news from the missing men including the fifteen who were
supposed to be on the Violette. The paper also opinioned that all of those who
had not made it to the Violette were likely lost. The next day however the
paper stated that although there were many rumors and reports they were not
substantiated and nothing would likely be known until the Violette was
eventually located.

And then the brig Lady Mary
arrived in St. John’s. On board were eight survivors from the group that had
set out from the beach in St. Vincent’s to board the Violette. They were able
to provide a first hand knowledge of some of the events of March 1st and
subsequent developments. They said that twenty of them had made it to
the Violette, the day after they left the beach in St. Vincent’s and had
remained on board until they were rescued. They had suffered from hunger and
cold and were on the point of giving up hope when on Thursday March 11th ,
a schooner, the S.S. Fogg on a voyage from St. John’s to the West Indies came
upon the drifting ship. With some difficulty, the Fogg managed to get close
enough to the Violette to take the men off who had been trapped on board
since March 2nd.

When these survivors arrived on
board the S.S. Fogg they were surprised and delighted to find that the group who
had made it to Cape Pine had also been picked up by the Fogg on Saturday March
6th. The S.S. Fogg was later successful in contacting two inbound
vessels and was able to transfer the rescued men to them. They were the Lady
Mary and the Trusty.

The Lady Mary brought in the
following men: Ed Nowlan, R Critch, Danny White, James Barry, Richard Connors,
John Murray, Thomas Hines and John St. Croix.

The men on board the Trusty were:
Michael Tobin, John Barry, Thomas Barry and James Murray.

The Trusty had been in trouble
when she came in contact with the SS Fogg. She was short of both provisions
and fuel. Captain Spense of the Fogg supplied the Trusty with food and the
hull and the spars of the Violette were used to provide them with fuel. The
Trusty had been bound for Harbour Grace in Conception Bay but because of the
ice conditions she was unable to reach her destination and put into another port
in Conception Bay.

The remaining ten survivors on
the Fogg were transferred to an outbound vessel the S.S. Nuernberg which took
them all the way to Baltimore, Maryland, USA. They arrived there on March 29th 1875. On
April 29th 1875 the ten men were returned to
St. John’s by the S.S. Newfoundland. These ten men were: Andrew Mooney, Thomas
Mooney, William Reuben, Patrick Tobin, James Tobin, John Fewer, James Peddle,
Thomas Dunn, Ben St. Croix and fourteen year old James Grace.

Of the thirty four men and boys
who had set out to board the Violette, thirteen had either drowned or died from
exposure. Those who died were: Michael Power, John Power, Michael Vail and his
son, Patrick Dobbin, Michael Barry, Thomas Bowen and his son, George Rousell
and his son, Pat Layden, James Grace and James Phelan.

The John Power who died in this
disaster was my great grandfather and Michael Power was his son. A second
younger son John who was my grandfather had been with the group on the beach in
St. Vincent’s but was dissuaded from going with them to the Violette by his
father and stayed to visit with an aunt in St. Vincent’s. This probably saved
his life.

This March 1875 disaster was the
worst single sea disaster to ever happen in the St. Mary’s – St. Vincent’s area.